A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Alice, of France
ALICE,
Of France, second daughter of Louis the Seventh of France, and of Alice of Champagne, was betrothed, at the age of fourteen, to Richard Cœur de Lion, second son of Henry the Second, of England. She was taken to that country to learn the language, where her beauty made such an impression that Henry the Second, though an old man, became one of her admirers. He placed her in the castle of Woodstock, where his mistress, the celebrated Rosamond Clifford, had been murdered, as was then reported, by his jealous wife, Eleanor of Guienne. Alice is said to have taken the place of Rosamond; at any rate, Henry's conduct to her so irritated Richard, that, incited by his mother, he took up arms against his father. Henry's death, in 1189, put an end to this unhappy position of affairs; but when Richard was urged by Philip Augustus of France to fulfil his engagement to his sister Alice, Richard refused, alleging that she had had a daughter by his father. The subsequent marriage of Richard with Berengaria of Navarre, so enraged Philip Augustus, that from that time he became the relentless enemy of the English king. Alice returned to France, and in 1195 she married William the Third, count of Ponthieu. She was the victim of the licentious passions of the English monarch. Had she been as happily married as her mother, she would, probable, have showed as amiable a disposition, and a mind of like excellence.